The present invention relates to an automatic control apparatus and more particularly to a general-purpose control apparatus for the control of a variety of kinds of equipment including those which require a high-level control function such as an adaptive control type robot.
So far, control devices for robots, machine tools and other factory equipment have in many cases been designed and manufactured as special-purpose control units dedicated to the control of a single predetermined controlled object. A special-purpose control device having an architecture directed to controlling a single object shows a high cost performance so long as it controls its intended object in a predetermined mode. However, it lacks adaptability to meet changes in the controlled object and the required control function. That is, when an existing control device has to be applied to another controlled object of the same kind but having a higher-level performance or function, or to an object of a different kind, or when an increase in the number of controlled objects, the introduction of a higher-level control function (for example, adaptive control or coordinate control), or an improvement in the speed or accuracy of control is required, it becomes necessary to alter the hardware of the device to a large extent. Moreover, in many cases, a partial change of the hardware can not provide the required control that the entire device must be replaced. In this connection, K. Aizawa et al. disclose , in their paper entitled "Development of New Type Robot Control Console (Model 4)" (The TOKICO REVIEW, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 20-26, 1984), a new type robot control console developed to cope with the development of various types of robots and the requirements for more sophisticated organic interfaces with peripheral devices, stating that the old type control consoles will not be able to meet such higher-level control functions. Accordingly, in the long-term view, it should be said that the cost performance of the special-purpose control device is rather low.
As a general-purpose control apparatus, a minicomputer or a super-minicomputer has hitherto been widely used, but such a computer is not satisfactory in that the processor load increases rapidly as the number of controlled objects increases, resulting in an overflow of its processing capacity. Further, the real-time processing and sensor-base adaptive control capacities are limited, and each computers are costly.